More than 500 people voted in the poll conducted by the Grimsby Telegraph, with the vast majority calling for a return to the simple county name of Lincolnshire.

It comes as pensioner Pam Moorhouse, who founded the British Counties Campaign which aims to restore the 92 historic counties to their original titles, prepares to gain more support for the proposal by visiting Westminster.

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She says legislation in the 1960s and 70s caused confusion in county identity by mixing traditional counties with administrative creations.

Lincolnshire Conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh has also thrown his support behind the campaign.

Pam Moorhouse

Ms Moorhouse, 72, said: "I want to clear up the confusion about county names.

"The local council doesn’t have to talk about North East Lincolnshire as a place – if it wants to attract new business, it could say, ‘Come and build your factory in the Grimsby/Cleethorpes area’.

"Why did we need a new name anyway? They created the council and the Humberside area to attract new business but we didn’t have those names before – we used to just say, ‘Come build your factory on the south bank of the Humber in Lincolnshire’.

"We didn’t ever get a chance to vote on bringing the Lincolnshire name back [after the dissolution of Humberside]."

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Ms Moorhouse is particularly concerned about the history of areas being rewritten, with history books and museums referring to modern administrative council names before they ever existed.

She says the name Humberside and then later North East Lincolnshire was 'forced' upon people without any say in the matter.

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Should the North East Lincolnshire name be ditched in favour of Lincolnshire?

0+ VOTES SO FAR

"They are deliberately wiping our history out when these counties have been around for a thousand years," she said.

"This is about where people live – it is our history and it important to anyone who lives here.

"Millions of people across the country are still very upset about the changes and rightly so because they were robbed.

Humberside

"If this carries on, then we will lose the history altogether. Young people won’t know anything about the traditional counties."

Campaigners will go to parliament tomorrow, Tuesday, April 17, to pitch their idea for a Traditional Counties Bill to be brought into law.

Officials at the British Counties Campaign want the law to restrict the use of the word ‘county’ to the 92 historic counties of the UK - 39 in England - and for ‘county councils’ to be renamed.

North East Lincolnshire should be ditched, people say

Emergency Services such as Humberside Police and Humberside Fire and Rescue should also have their names changed and their service area "aligned as closely possible with the [traditional] counties", according to the proposed draft wording of the bill.

Campaigners argue regions such as Yorkshire and Humber and the East Midlands should be wiped off the map entirely if they are deemed to clash with the county identity.

The activists also want the Royal Mail to promote the use of the “appropriate county” on addresses, bringing the Lincolnshire name back to full prominence, while they say media outlets should also do the same.